New Bedford will have to live with its mistakes forever if it gets harbor cleanup wrong

Sunday

Oct 14, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 15, 2012 at 2:31 PM

Like many city residents, I'm not quite sure what to make of the $366 million AVX settlement that will forever bury PCBs in New Bedford Harbor.

Like many city residents, I'm not quite sure what to make of the $366 million AVX settlement that will forever bury PCBs in New Bedford Harbor.

Everyone from the EPA to Attorney General Martha Coakley to Mayor Jon Mitchell seems to think it's just the thing to do.

They point out that instead of a 40-year-cleanup, the Acushnet River will now be cleaned up in five to seven years, finally giving New Bedford Harbor back to residents of the city, Fairhaven and Acushnet after well over a half century.

But I can't help worrying about this CAD cell technology, which will bury the carcinogens beneath tons of sand, and maybe even relocate another portion of it along the banks of the river itself.

I'm not an environmental scientist and am certainly not equipped to make a decision on whether or not this technology is a reasonable solution to our problem.

But one thing I do know is that I've lived long enough in the United States, and New Bedford in particular, to know that government officials have sometimes gotten it wrong when it comes to big environmental issues. Can you spell Keith Middle School?

Even today officials are once again examining cleanup solutions for the wetlands behind the new middle school that they once thought clean but has now turned out to still be dirty.

Since I'm not a scientist, I'm inclined to place some weight on the local non-profit groups that have followed these issues closer than I have. In this case, that would be the Buzzards Bay Coalition and Hands Across the River.

Mark Rasmussen of the coalition is a well-respected community member who has done yeoman's work on local environmental issues for decades. Rasmussen and the coalition have hired an attorney and are considering intervening while this settlement is open for public comment over the next month.

He says the coalition can still negotiate a better deal even though EPA head Curt Spalding says the organization has no legal standing. I don't know who's right about that — maybe the courts will decide.

Rasmussen, however, raises a couple of points that seem worth considering.

1. He contends that in 2010 the EPA estimated it could remove the dangerous PCB-laden soil from the river by hydraulic dredging (the present process being used in the cleanup) and relocate it to a waste dump in Michigan for $417 million. That's just $42 million more than the $366 million CAD cell-based cleanup announced this week.

Both Rasmussen and Edwin Rivera of Hands Across the River question why the city should believe the EPA figure of $366 million is enough money for a cleanup, given the ever-escalating costs of environmental cleanups. They particularly object to the EPA's refusal to say how the agency arrived at the $366 million figure. EPA says that because the number was part of the negotiations with AVX, it can't reveal how it was calculated. (AVX, by the way, is the successor to Aerovox, the company said to have polluted the harbor.)

Rasmussen notes that in 1998, EPA thought $99 million might be enough to clean up the harbor. By 2004, that money had run out and the federal Superfund then spent another $225 million and, of course, the harbor is still not close to clean.

Now, EPA is saying another $366 million will do the trick. The problem, however, is that once this $366 million is approved, the city will never have another chance to hold AVX accountable again.

"Excuse me if I'm not convinced," Rasmussen says dryly.

Rasmussen also argues that the EPA's cleanup standard of 50 parts PCBs per 1 million parts of soil is 20-years-old and "outdated." The current standard, used at PCB sites like the Housatonic and Hudson rivers is 1 part per million, he says.

Rasmussen labels 50 parts per million a standard that was once appropriate for industrial sites but notes that several big New Bedford mills have now been turned into residential housing and a recreational riverwalk is planned. That standard is no longer appropriate, he argues, and wouldn't have been appropriate for a residential or recreational area to begin with.

Rasmussen contends that money is the only factor driving a CAD cell cleanup over hydraulic drilling and he argues that New Bedford doesn't have to settle for smaller cleanup than other communities have won.

"I think if the mayor was given the opportunity to do this with hydraulic dredging for a comparable price, I can't believe he wouldn't support that," he says.

I couldn't reach Mayor Mitchell for this column but Rasmussen says the mayor has been very open to the coalition's concerns.

Beyond the coalition's observations, Karen Vilandry of Hands Across the River, notes that the Acushnet River cleanup is an environmental justice issue for a working-class community that has been devastated by PCB contamination.

What that means is that the mill owners who polluted New Bedford Harbor are long gone to the suburbs and beyond while largely low-income city residents are stuck with the contamination that has crippled their use of the harbor.

I'm not saying the local environmentalists are right and the EPA is wrong. I really don't know.

I do know that the EPA and city officials are trying their best to clean up this river in an era when government resources are smaller and smaller every year.

But I especially know that there should be far more public information about how this $366 million figure was arrived at. And there should be more public information about the cost of a CAD cell cleanup vs. a hydraulic-drilling cleanup.

Because New Bedford is only going to get one chance at cleaning up this harbor the right way. And it will have to live with its mistakes forever if it gets this cleanup wrong.

Jack Spillane is the executive news editor of The Standard-Times and southcoastoday.com. He can be reached at 508-979-4472.